It is well known that emulsions often cause difficulties in industrial processing operations. For this reason, the emulsified components need to be separated. Often, one or more chemicals, known as demulsifiers, are used for this purpose.
For example, during crude oil processing, it is commonplace for water to become emulsified in the oil. The emulsified water is problematic from several standpoints, most notably as a corrosive to pipelines and as a disruptor to oil distillation processes. The resulting water-in-oil emulsion is typically highly stable as a result of natural surfactants (e.g., naphthenic acids, asphaltenes, and resins) in the crude oil.
To disrupt the stabilized water-in-oil emulsions in crude oil, specialized organic and silicone demulsifiers have been used. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,004,559, 4,183,820, 3,677,962, and British Patent No. GB 1439793, all of which disclose the use of polyoxyalkylene-polysiloxane copolymers as demulsifiers in crude oil or petroleum processing. However, there remains a need for demulsifiers capable of breaking and/or separating such emulsions more effectively.